What's On Your 2020 Bookshelf?

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  • Chorister wrote: »
    I've decided to read Emma Donoghue's "Room" as I think it will particularly resonate with our present restrictions. It's true, I know I am reading it in an entirely different way than I would have pre-lockdown.
    Jack's gradual understanding, that what he has always known is not the only reality to be experienced, is a painful discovery, particularly for his mother - a fascinating extension of the perfectly natural 'why, why, why' questioning of a young boy, overlaid on an horrific earlier experience of a time before he was born. I really hope it has a happy ending and that they are able to emerge safely from their own peculiar lockdown into a much better life together. No spoilers please!

    No spoilers but it is a very relevant book. In many ways. The oppressiveness of isolation is well presented. The challenges of freedom are also well presented.
  • Ooh, and the Story of England is available for a year. Michael Wood's series on the Domesday book was amazing too. That one I own the book and just about remember seeing the series.
    Yes, his documentaries are great as they are very much about ordinary people (I’m very much a social historian). He has a lovely manner with people too.
    Looking forward to watching the new David Olusoga series, loved the previous ones and his book Black and British.
  • TrudyTrudy Heaven Host, 8th Day Host
    "Room" is a great lockdown book selection! Was it on this thread or elsewhere I saw someone suggested "A Gentleman in Moscow" in the same vein? Very different (though also traumatic) reason for being trapped inside, but similar ideas around how full a life can be lived within a small physical space.
  • Lily PadLily Pad Shipmate
    Trudy wrote: »
    Just started Sue Monk Kidd's The Book of Longings, which is about Jesus' wife, but not in a cringy Da Vinci Code kind of way. Really, I think, it's about a young Jewish woman in 1st century Palestine who wants to be educated and learn and think for herself but is prohibited from doing so by the expectations her society has for women (in that way, though in a different century, very much like Rachel Kadish's The Weight of Ink that I enjoyed so much and led our Ship Book Club discussion on last month). It seems to have a very appealing, though very human, portrayal of Jesus, although so far the main character has only met him once. It's been highly recommended to me by people whose taste I trust, and I've enjoyed some of Kidd's other books (some more than others), so I'm interested to see where it will go.

    Thanks, @Trudy, our libraries open for curbside pick-up tomorrow so I have finally allowed myself to look at this thread again. I will trust the taste of those who have recommended it to you. Our library has this on order and there is only one other hold on it so I will get it fairly soon after it comes in.

  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    I’m reading Soap and Water and Common Sense, by Bonnie Henry, now famous as British Columbia’s chief public health authority and spokesperson for the BC government on Covid.

    She wrote it about a decade ago and her publisher just re-issued it with a short forward by her sister. It’s published by Anansi, which is a small Canadian publisher, so probably not easily available elsewhere, but it’s well-written brief guide to infectious diseases and our attempts to overcome them.
  • TrudyTrudy Heaven Host, 8th Day Host
    I have since finished The Book of Longings and do recommend it!
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    Bonnie Henry is also famous for graduating from my alma mater, Saint John High School. ;^)
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I just completed the The Performance by Ann Eriksson, a Canadian author. A frame story with a plot full of twists and turn.I highly recommend it.
  • MoyessaMoyessa Shipmate
    I enjoy collections, such as "Prize-winning Essays of (insert year)".

    I still remember an excellent investigative essay on the story beneath the MSM story - in this case, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, old people in old people's home drowning - likely because of greedy, careless owners not stepping up to their responsibilities.

    It was very, very touching and revelatory of human nature - to read a more complete account than the shocking headlines.
    Real journalism is more about hard work & curiosity, than fame and fortune (my current mantra).

    * I have searched all over my house, in order to give more complete information, but I imagine that it's long ago been given to the Library.
  • Last night I finished reading Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal", pub 2004. The villain is a very successful businessman, who persuades people to invest in him, and cheats them of their money, perfectly legally. He is deeply odious, and lives in Tump Tower....
  • Jane RJane R Shipmate
    And he might have gone on to overthrow the Patrician and Make Ankh-Morpork Great Again. But that would be too far-fetched... Oh wait.

    Truth really is stranger than fiction.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I'm reading Michael Twitty's book The Cooking Gene. I've wanted to get hold of it ever since I came across his blog, some years ago. He is a black cook, who specialises in re-enacting the cooking of the Old South during the time of slavery.
    The book has a few recipes, but is mainly about his research into his family history, and the difficulties the search poses when your ancestors included enslaved people and white plantation owners.
  • TukaiTukai Shipmate
    Martin Luther King by Geoffy Hodgson. I got this out of our local library a few days before the death of George Floyd, so it proved a very timely reminder that life for blacks in the southern USA was even worse a few decades ago. Though it seems that some aspects have not improved much , e.g. voter non-registration and rough-house police, even in the Obama years when the book was written, let alone now.
    The book itself is a straightforward and easily read biography.
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    I've been reading the InCryptid series. Fun, but not great.
  • With thanks again to @Jane R for the Lexi Conyngham recommendation, I've just finished Death in a Scarlet Gown.

    I listened to Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo on BBC Sounds, and wonder if I've short-changed myself by listening to it rather than reading it. I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem to me to be Booker Prize worthy. I'm not sure if I should give it another go, but in print. My daughter has a copy I can borrow. Has anyone else read it?
  • TrudyTrudy Heaven Host, 8th Day Host
    edited June 2020
    Just started rereading S.A. Chakraborty's City of Brass (and will then reread Kingdom of Copper) in anticipation of the release of the 3rd volume of this trilogy, Empire of Gold, on June 30. They are, by a large margin, the fantasy novels I've enjoyed most in recent years.
  • NicoleMR wrote: »
    I've been reading the InCryptid series. Fun, but not great.

    I've also been enjoying the series. However, I'm annoyed by the Antimony stories, mainly because she keeps whinging about not being the favourite child. Unless they're a singleton, every child thinks their siblings got a better deal than them. Pull up your big girl panties! And I'm annoyed with her family for sending her into the heart of the Covenant without any get out plan.
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    Oooh, no spoilers! I'm only on the third book!
  • Apologies. But, if you're unsure about the series already, you may not get that far. As with every series I've ever read, the first books are the best.
  • Jane RJane R Shipmate
    With thanks again to @Jane R for the Lexi Conyngham recommendation, I've just finished Death in a Scarlet Gown.

    Glad you're enjoying her work as well. I am hoping for more stories set in Orkney - I think that's my favourite of her historical series.

    Also looking forward to Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest (Doors of Eden) but it's not due to be published until August.

    I like Seanan McGuire's October Daye series (although the last few books have been shorter than usual and made up to novel-length by the inclusion of short stories or novellas, which I think is cheating) but I didn't like the Incryptid books much. Read one and got about halfway through a second before giving up.

  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    I’ve been reading Robert Hughes’ book on Goya. It’s a good book, even if Hughes’ rather rebarbative personality sometimes comes off a little too clearly on the page. One thing I didn’t realize is that Goya was deaf for much of his working life after a major illness in the 1790s.

    Also reading Edith Wharton’s Four Novellas of Old New York which is a bit of a break from the darkness of the later chapters of Goya’s life.
  • I was enjoying the October Daye series very much, but now I feel it's gone on too long, and I want it to end. Does anyone know of a series that maintained its quality for more than three books?
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    Does anyone know of a series that maintained its quality for more than three books?

    C S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia does quite well.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    Quite a few children’s series. Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” books (admittedly there are great varieties in style, but it was the fourth in the series that won an award). Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries”. Hugh Lofting’s Dr Dolittle (where the first book is by far the worst).
    But I guess there is a problem by book four; unless you’ve planned the progression already, you may either start repeating themes from the earlier books, or go off at a tangent that prevents the series holding together satisfactorily. And if you’ve set the stories in a contemporary world, you may run into problems with anachronisms as the chronology of the characters’ lives may become contemporaneous with a future you don’t know how to predict.
  • HelenEvaHelenEva Shipmate
    My colleague at work is making me read Finnegans Wake. Should I page an employment lawyer? :wink:
  • Jane RJane R Shipmate
    I was enjoying the October Daye series very much, but now I feel it's gone on too long, and I want it to end. Does anyone know of a series that maintained its quality for more than three books?

    The children's series already mentioned.

    The Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky (it may not be your cup of tea, but it goes on for ten books of good to outstanding quality: my favourite is 'The Sea Watch', number 6 in the series).

    The Petrovich series by Simon Morden (maybe cheating a bit here, as it's only four books long, but it doesn't feel like he's run out of ideas).

    I can think of a few others, mostly SFF. I think the problem usually comes when an author becomes known for one very popular series and feels (financially or morally) obliged to keep writing books for it long after they have run out of new ideas. The last few October Daye books have felt more like gallops through a familiar landscape than anything else. Some of the mid to late Discworld books by Terry Pratchett feel a bit like that too - they got more interesting when he added 'Satirise an aspect of modern culture and/or politics' to his three standard plots.
  • Aravis wrote: »
    Quite a few children’s series. Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” books (admittedly there are great varieties in style, but it was the fourth in the series that won an award).
    My favourite books from primary school, I wrote the poem out and decorated it with related images, including the 6 signs, and put it on the wall by my bed. I’m sure this fantasy series of good and evil was responsible for my later love of dystopian fiction. I bought the books for my sons.
  • Lewis, Cooper, Lofting and Pratchett, yes, absolutely. The other names mentioned here I don't know. Very happy to admit I was wrong.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I'm very fond of the Rivers of London series, too, which has books with interlinking graphic novels - magical policing, mostly in London, with discussion of jazz, modern architecture, ghosts on the Underground and, in the latest German example, wine making.
  • HelenEvaHelenEva Shipmate
    Eigon wrote: »
    I'm very fond of the Rivers of London series, too, which has books with interlinking graphic novels - magical policing, mostly in London, with discussion of jazz, modern architecture, ghosts on the Underground and, in the latest German example, wine making.

    The Vinyl Detective by the guy who co-writes the graphic novels (I think) is also good. Specially for the jazz.
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    Rivers of London is awesome!
  • Aravis wrote: »
    Quite a few children’s series. Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” books (admittedly there are great varieties in style, but it was the fourth in the series that won an award).

    I've been re-reading "The Dark Is Rising" recently and there's no doubt in my mind that Book 4 is the best - by far the best - and totally deserved its Newbery Medal. I think it's largely because of the absence of the Drew children, who in the other books are constantly having to be protected and kept out of the way of the real action. Bran and John Rowlands make a much better foils for Will, who is in some ways a rather disturbing and inhuman character, much more so than I realised as a child. Owen Davies is a memorable character too and I can just imagine Rob Brydon playing him most effectively. Also it's a short, punchy book with a clean ending.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    Heavenly Annie, I discovered that the poem (I’m assuming you mean “When the Dark is rising, six shall turn it back”?) fits perfectly to the tune of “Noel Nouvelet” (aka the hymn “Love is come again like wheat that springeth green”)
  • It’s wonderful how we use our personal creativity to interpret words in a meaningful way, isn’t it. I used to sing it to my own made up tune.

    I’ve decided to re-read John Hull’s ‘Touching the Rock: an experience of blindness’. It is the diary of a blind theologian and an account of going blind and how it affects perception and experience of the world in daily life. I first read it over 20 years ago when I was teaching ophthalmic nursing and thought it was time for a refresh (I discussed disability and Christian identity in a bible study I led last night). I’ve also ordered ‘In the Beginning There Was Darkness: A Blind Person's Conversations with the Bible’, which I’m sure I did have a copy of but I’ve either lost it or given it away.
  • ChoristerChorister Shipmate
    Quite by chance, I have ended up reading two books about lost people, one after the other. Firstly, 'Sheet Music' by M. J. Rose - about a woman who travels overseas to interview a musician, who then mysteriously disappears, and now 'Gone Girl' about a husband whose wife mysteriously disappears. In the first book, the interviewer never gets to meet her subject, but learns a lot about herself and her dysfunctional family relationships en route. The second, I've only just started, so it will be interesting to see where it leads.... I wonder if I will notice any similarities between the two books, beyond the obvious missing person theme?
  • ChoristerChorister Shipmate
    Another similarity is that one of the main characters in each novel had a series of books written about them when they were children! In the first novel, a cookery series, in the second novel, a children's story series. Now I'm starting to wonder whether the newer book was modelled on the older book to some extent. Both American. Time will tell....
  • venbedevenbede Shipmate
    I’ve just finished Iris Murdoch’s The Bell. A fine novel which has this surprising passage in the final pages, surprising because Murdoch had probably lost any religious faith by the time she wrote it, but it says something so powerful about the Christian eucharist which is completely overlooked in well meaning attempts to be friendly and relevant:

    He looked about him with the calmness of a ruined man. But what did from his former life remain t him was the Mass. After the first weeks he went back to it, crossing the causeway in the early morning through the white fog, placing his feet carefully on the bricks which seemed to glow beneath him in some light from the hidden answering the summons of the bell. The Mass remained, not consoling, not uplifting, but in some way factual. It contained for him no assurance that all would be made well that was not well. It simply existed as a kind of pure reality separate from the weavings of his own thought.
  • I have just started the Jessica Christ series, and it is utterly hilarious. God has another son - oops - no daughter.

    So many superb quips: Having spent time with Jews and Christians, she could understand why Moses spent time with Jews; God was actually telling Noah to spread the news that a flood was coming and to get to higher ground. "Or, maybe, I don't know, build a huge boat". He go the wrong end of that.

    But also - interestingly - understanding Christian Theology (Sin, Atonement) to Jessica at KinderGarden. Which is really thought provoking.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    Currently, I am reading to science fiction books. The first is Hellstrom's Hive by Frank Herbert, better know for the Dune series. The second is Total Eclipse by John Brunner, best know for winning a Hugo for Stand on Zanzibar. A rare treat reading two science fiction giants at once.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    I haven’t read The Bell for a while. It’s a good read but my favourite Iris Murdoch is “A Fairly Honourable Defeat” with its endlessly surprising web of relationships between the characters and subtle links to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” *

    *I have to admit that even after reading the book three times I’d never made that connection - it was my daughter who pointed it out to me.
  • I've just read a children's book from about 1980 by Leon Garfield called "John Diamond". Naive pre-teen hero goes to Victorian London to right an old family wrong and rapidly finds himself out of his depth. Would highly recommend! Writing style and characterisation both great fun. Dark in parts but not unremittingly so.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I love Leon Garfield! I think my favourite is Smith, about a child pickpocket who has to learn to read to understand the document he stole, just before a man was killed for it. He also did a collection of short stories about apprentices, one for each month of the year.
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    We've recently had a pile of Leon Garfields arrive in the charity bookshop where I volunteer. He seems to have gone right out of fashion, which is a shame as I enjoyed his books. Maybe I'll buy one or two if they are still there next week.
    I read in the Guardian that people read more during lockdown. One of the books it mentioned wasThe Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell which I've just finished. It was a well plotted thriller. Not quite sure it was entirely believable, but an enjoyable read all the same. I've also just read Robert Harris's The Second Sleep. Very interesting premise, but he either got bored or didn't know how to finish it as it all ended far more abruptly than I thought it should.
    All the characters get killed off in a disaster that reminded me of the Tony Hancock's half-hour series The Bowmans where the cast of a radio soap opera meet with their doom crossing a field.
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    I'm wading my way through Greg Boyd's "Satan and the Problem of Evil" (the one-volume version, I believe the full one runs to several tomes) and also have on the go Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" (bedside book) and "Mr Golightly's Holiday" by Salley Vickers (downstairs cloakroom book).
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    Mr Golightly's Holiday is lovely!
  • I would have liked it, if it had acknowledged its debt to Mr Weston's Good Wine by Powys. As I remember it, the Vickers basically copies the older book.

    Currently I'm rereading Pilgrim's Progress, and am enjoying it more than I have before. But I still have one big problem. After the glorious description of Christian's burden falling off, there is no more forgiveness. The book is full of characters who make a mistake and are stuck for eternity. (I once described it as being full of salvation by works and the dear departed Ken got very cross with me.)
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I just finished Campusland by Scott Johnson. It is satire but cuts very close to reality. Most reviewers have strong opinions pro or con, often determined by their ideological bent.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    Thanks, Robert Armin - I'll look out for Mr Weston's Good Wine.
  • ChoristerChorister Shipmate
    Half way through another lockdown novel - this time about a barely-literate farm labourer who volunteers to take part in an experiment, where he is locked in a cellar for seven years, with only some books, a piano and a journal for company. Of course, in a time of abject poverty, he does it for the money, and the promise that his wife and children will be well looked after while he is incarcerated.

    Lockdown books have a strange appeal to me at the moment - I need to read them fast, before any fellow-feeling fades. The book is set at the end of the 18th century and convincingly examines the political, social and cultural, class-bound, misogynistic mores of the time. It is called 'The Warlow Experiment' by Alix Nathan, if you are tempted to find it for yourself.
  • I've discovered an entertaining series called "Claw and Warder". Not great literature but urban fantasy where the main character is a Hassidic werewolf. He's vegetarian because you can't get kosher long pig. It's keeping me amused.
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